Duke & Jones

Manchester dance music duo Duke & Jones combine house, hip-hop, pop, EDM, and trap into a slick, high-energy blend encompassing everything from growling bass bangers to melodic, minimalist vocal tracks. The pair broke through with their 2018 Eclipse EP and have continued to release yet more EPs, including 2019′s Paradox and 2020′s Solace. In 2022, they scored a viral hit with “Jiggle Jiggle,” featuring an Auto-Tuned rap by British filmmaker Louis Theroux.
Luke Conibear and Isaac McKelvey met in their early teens at a New Year’s Eve party, where they discovered a shared love of electronic music-making. They got together every weekend to make beats, and eventually made it a proper project in 2015, enrolling together at Manchester’s School of Electronic Music in order to learn how to DJ. After releasing a string of tracks on netlabels like Riotville, Downright, and Thrive, the pair issued their first proper EP, Eclipse, in 2018 on Circus Records. They made their live debut that year at London’s iconic Ministry of Sound nightclub at the invitation of Zeds Dead, for whom they had remixed the tune “Lights Go Down.” The Canadian duo had also issued Duke & Jones’ track “Tusk” on their Deadbeats label, and would go on to put out many more of their releases.
This auspicious start immediately boosted Duke & Jones into the spotlight and drew interest from other artists who requested their remix skills. They made high-profile remixes for artists like Zedd, Alison Wonderland & Dillon Francis, Louis the Child, Yellow Claw, and Marshmello, while also continuing a steady output of their own productions, such as the EPs Dystopia (2018), Paradox (2019), and Solace (2020). In 2022, the duo earned a viral hit with the track “Jiggle Jiggle,” featuring British journalist and documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux. The song was produced around an Auto-Tuned version of a rap Theroux initially wrote and performed on his 2000 TV series Weird Weekends (that also incorporated some of Neil Diamond’s song “Red Red Wine”), as well as an updated version of the rap Theroux performed on the 2022 web series Chicken Shop Date. ~ John D. Buchanan